Hi csl,
As usual, you describe something like anarchy while pretending it's some sort of economic system, which it ain't.
Yes. I understand you see the world that way. As an almost government-free Shang-ri La. I also note that you still cannot see that markets are entirely dependent upon laws and regulations. Without them, I can go to your shop, take your goods and stab you to death.
That's why existing laws and regulations are important to you, even though you have the luxury of living in a mostly law-abiding society; and it's because they exist and are largely invisible that you have time to pretend they aren't protecting the markets which provide the food you eat and the house you live in.
Governments create those laws.
They also do things like protecting national parks, clean air, children, the disabled, while procuring common goods like courts, education, police, firefighters, defensive institutions, healthcare, transportation networks etc.
It all sounds neato when using abstract phrases about shrinking government. It's when you define the things that you wish to reduce that the issues appear.
As regards the corruption of that system, you can always change your constitution, create more coherent laws, print more trustworthy people, deliver a culture which rewards things other than wealth. Jefferson made a suggestion which he called the pursuit of happiness. That's not the same thing as property.
It's the desire for property which generates corruption, of course. Government is one vector through which folks seek it by corrupt means. I have experienced it in the private sector as well.
It's up to people in Chicago and America to decide what they want. But Chicago is one city and Los Angeles another.
As regards your Fox News view of your opponents in politics. Republicans all seem to proclaim their wish to shrink government. This isn't true, of course. They want to expand the military and the long arm of the law when it comes to the consumption of drugs, and such things.
But this doesn't mean Dems want to grow government. For me and most other folks I know, the aim of liberalism is to establish a healthy balance between cooperation and individuallism. To use both to the extent they deliver effective results.
Maybe you are thinking about socialism? If you can point me towards all the socialist cities which wish to keep expanding government in the way you describe, then we can talk. But at the moment, you are talking about Chicago, a city that sounds like it has lost its way. An isolated case not a general rule.
Usually, of course, it turns out that Republican complaints about governments conceal a particular issue, which is contempt for the poor and the wish to punish such people. They will brand all such folks as lazy and seek to remove any protections they have. And of course they just ignore the fact that only a very small proportion of poor people fit their description.
By the way, the association Republicans make between small government and economic efficiency is belied by the numbers. The most successful economies by all sorts of measures are the Scandinavian ones. Their governments are fairly extensive.
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